World News - Bush budget plan sparks howls of protest Special interest groups, Democrats, even some in GOP voice opposition

President Bush, constrained by wars, hurricanes and exploding budget deficits, has sent Congress a 2007 spending plan that is garnering howls of pain from farmers, teachers, doctors and a wide array of other groups with special interests.Democrats, as expected, pronounced the Republican president’s budget plan dead on arrival. But many Republicans were equally sharp in their reservations about the $2.77 trillion spending blueprint the administration unveiled on Monday.Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called Bush’s proposed cuts in education and health “scandalous” while Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she was “disappointed and even surprised” at the extent of the administration’s proposed cuts in Medicaid and Medicare.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com

A surprising group of protesters is starting to voice concerns about the high level of spending on the U.S. occupation of Iraq: the defense industry. While many companies benefit from supplying vehicles and guns to U.S. troops in Iraq, some defense firms and industry experts are concerned that money spent on Iraq is taking away from more lucrative, longer-term multibillion-dollar programs.The result is some confusion over the Pentagon's strategy, and fears that the United States will end up with a "hollow force" if it doesn't fulfill its modernization plans."We're spending $6 billion to $7 billion a month in Iraq -- that's not efficient spending of defense money," said Frank Lanza, chief executive of defense company L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., in an interview last week.Other defense contractors are thinking the same thing, even if they are not saying it in public, a leading defense analyst added....http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060206/us_nm/arms_iraq_dc

senior US officer admitted yesterday that the presence of more than 300,000 foreign troops in the Middle East, most of them American, was a "contributory factor" to instability in the region.The admission was made by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt - a key strategist in the US central command covering the Middle East - as he spelled out the American military's plan to "reposture" its forces over an area stretching from Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to Uganda in the south.The US would "not maintain any long-term bases in Iraq" he said in a major speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "Our position is when we leave we will not have any bases there."He did not speculate when that might be, though he said the US could not stay in the region for as long as its forces have remained in Germany or Japan. American troops are still deployed there 60 years after the end of the second world war....http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1703971,00.html

An astonishing mist-shrouded "lost world" of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests of New Guinea has been uncovered by an international team of scientists. Among the new species of birds, frogs, butterflies and palms discovered in the expedition through this pristine environment, untouched by man, was the spectacular Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise. The scientists are the first outsiders to see it. They could only reach the remote mountainous area by helicopter, which they described it as akin to finding a "Garden of Eden".In a jungle camp site, surrounded by giant flowers and unknown plants, the researchers watched rare bowerbirds perform elaborate courtship rituals. The surrounding forest was full of strange mammals, such as tree kangaroos and spiny anteaters, which appeared totally unafraid, suggesting no previous contact with humans....http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article343740.ece

Suspected left-wing rebels have killed at least seven police officers in a clash over coca eradication efforts in Colombia, the government says. The officers were guarding workers involved in an operation to destroy cocaine laboratories and the plants used to make the drug, officials said. A worker was also hurt in the incident at the Sierra Macarena National Park, 170km (100 miles) south of Bogota. The president called the police heroes, and sent military reinforcements. "They died in the line of duty liberating this park from the claws of terrorism," Alvaro Uribe said. Some 2,000 troops, along with 1,500 police officers, were sent to the national park earlier this month after rebels killed 29 soldiers working to destroy coca near the park. President Uribe vowed to wipe out coca in the region after the attack, which was blamed on the country's main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4687760.stm

Black and Latino inmates were segregated in one Los Angeles County jail on Monday and the entire jail system was on indefinite lockdown following weekend riots that left one dead and about 60 injured. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca ordered the lockdown for the 21,000 inmates in his control after two riots at a detention center complex that he said reflected daily "brown on black" violence between Latinos and blacks in the county's gangs.The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that prisoners cannot be segregated along racial lines except in extraordinary circumstances.But Baca told reporters he would like to impose segregation whenever a jail had information that racial fighting might flare and he showed the media a note he had received from an inmate urging sheriffs "please separate us by race for everyone's safety."...http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060207/ts_nm/crime_prison_dc